More "Miles Per Acre" From Bioelectricity Than Ethanol

CarnegieScience writes "Scientist calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80% more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change."

Comments

Pretty low standards

[mcrbids]

Comparing energy production density to Corn-based Ethanol is like stealing candy from a baby. Corn-fueled Ethanol has a tough time doing much better than just burning fossil fuels outright in systemic carbon footprint, and in some studies, is actually WORSE than strictly burning gasoline/oil.

Yes, the average is a net improvement of anywhere from 25% to 70% return on investment, but even then, you have to consider the value of the farmland itself! We'd probably do much better by simply growing wild grass on prime farmland, harvesting it, and burying it, when looking in terms of carbon footprint!

So saying that NNN technology is X% better than bioethanol is like saying that doing X is less painful than scraping off your penile foreskin with a cheese grater.

Truthful, but not very useful. Come back when you have something that actually works. For example, what's the benefit of bio-electricity over Photo-voltaics? Now that the latter technology is down to (or better than) $1/watt, this becomes a very, very tough technology to beat, and actually works better on craptastic, rocky soil off in the desert someplace with 3 inches of rainfall per year.

Meaning, we can get back to using farmland for growing food, and stop with this silly "let's raid the kitchen cupboard to feed our guzzling SUVs!" craze that's been on for the last few years.

Re:Units?

[LordKazan]

I think it's pretty clear what they are saying: with bioelectricity you get more harvastable energy per acre of planting. Crops take space to grow.

but.... then also see: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225951&cid=27864987

food crops->energy = ill advised

Re:Food crops as energy was never a good idea.

[SnarfQuest]

If you thought that ethanol production was an ecological problem, then you should rethink your beliefs. Ethanol from corn is a political gambit, government subsidies for corn/ethinol is just a way to but votes. It is not an economical process, in fact it is one of the worst possible ways to create ethanol, and only succeeds in raising the cost of food.

Re:Pretty low standards Corn Ethanol

[LordKazan]

Aglae can produce oil instead of ethanol. Oil that can be treated just like light sweet crude at the refinery, with a lot less impurities [so it's easier to refine].

So to not do something stupid like Algae Ethanol and do Algae Oil the biggest advantage is it's a potentially carbon neutral drop in replacement that can be used in existing gasoline and diesel engines.

If you can get efficient storage of electricity (like hopefully EEStor isn't full of it) a pure-eletric system will be better - but at the same time we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions massively by using Algal Oil as a drop in replacement for fossil oil.

Now as gas/diesel demand drops down in about 50 years we can do other things with that algae production infrastructure I'd imagine.

Re:Oy.

[CaseyB]

But I think we're going to need literally quantum advances in energy storage technology

You mean the absolute smallest possible advances?

Re:Pretty low standards Corn Ethanol

[LordKazan]

Hydroponic Algae is several orders of Magnitude less complex than Hydroponic food crops.

Algae is a free floating aquatic plant so a lot of the labor intensities go away in the blink of an eye, and it has a higher plant density than hydroponic corn.

Hydroponic Wheat/Corn/etc is more expensive because it's wasteful and increases the energy costs associated.

Need to separate your Algae from the water? Sieve.. isn't so simply for corn, etc as they have to sit in racks and only their roots are being bathed and all kinds of other complexities.

All you need to grow hydroponic algae is water circulation, sunlight, carbon dioxide and some nutrients in the water [clean up fertilizer polluted water anyone?]

and the "wear and tear" on transparent plastic tubes that simply have algae-bearing water running through them isn't going to be nearly as bad as other hydroponics.

In short: bad comparison.

Re:Units?

[AliasMarlowe]

Google doesn't agree:
1.0 mpg = 86 furlongs per firkin

Sometimes, Google gets it wrong, and it did so in this case. Both the gallon and the firkin are defined differently in US and imperial units. I explicitly said US gallons and US firkins, and supplied a link where the unit definitions could be found. A US firkin contains 7.875 US gallons (29.81 L). An imperial firkin contains 9 imperial gallons (40.91 L). Here are the conversions including mixed units:
1 mile per gallon (US) = 63 furlongs per firkin (US)
1 mile per gallon (US) = 86.46 furlongs per firkin (imp)
1 mile per gallon (imp) = 59.95 furlongs per firkin (US)
1 mile per gallon (imp) = 72 furlongs per firkin (imp)
So Google was apparently using US gallons and imperial firkins - a real screw-up and an astonishing inconsistency! It's worth checking up on Google's answers, rather than blindly accepting them.

To be absolutely pedantic, of course, we must note that these calculations use US liquid gallons, not the smaller US dry gallons, and that the US firkin is a quarter of a standard US barrel, not the very slightly smaller beer barrel or the rather larger oil barrel (neither of which would result in the 86 figure, anyway).